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Karl Popper trashed Plato in The Open Society and its Enemies.

• fmajid 1y ago
  And Bertrand Russell in his contemporaneous "History of Western Philosophy" (1946), which goes into more details on the historical context with Sparta. Plato was basically a disgruntled aristocrat who despised Athenian democracy that led to his social class losing absolute power. Socrates was executed for being a nexus of Spartan collaborationism (the "misleading the youth" was a thinly veiled work-around around the amnesty that was granted as part of the peace settlement with Sparta). "The Republic" advocates for full-on fascism beyond the wildest imagination of Mussolini, Hitler or Stalin. For a more accessible critic, there is I.F. Stone's "The Trial of Socrates".
  • mjburgess 1y ago
    I think it's more accurate to say that Socrates was improperly sensitive to the climate spartan dictatorship had brought about, esp. that he had been a mentor to some of those involved. If he had been more politically-minded, he'd have given some actual apology or shown at least some sensitivity. Instead, of course, he resented being forced to attend to non-philosophical matters.
    • fmajid 1y ago
      In the Athenian system, after a conviction, the prosecution and the defendant would offer competing sentences for the crime. The prosecution recommended death, Socrates said he should be housed and fed for life by the state. The jurors were so incensed he was sentenced to death with a higher majority than had voted him guilty.
  • analog31 1y ago
    Indeed, I wonder if Plato was responsible for "everybody kmows democracy is a failure" up until quite recently.
• marginalia_nu 1y ago
  A fairly large chunk of the western philosophical corpus is philosophers giving their predecessors the dozens.